When Nick Clegg yearns for a pint after holding a difficult constituency surgery, he has been known to pop into the Rising Sun, a mere stumble from his office in the affluent Nether Green suburb of Sheffield. In the future, however, it may be advisable for him to look elsewhere for his beer and sympathy. "Nick Clegg is a wretch, a spineless person who the Tories bought and nothing he has done has impressed me at all," says Ian Cox, the pub's barman. "He's a lapdog and I regret voting for him, like everyone else."

It's not an unusual sentiment. As the London riots were being waged, shopkeepers near the Lib Dem leader's constituency office were warned by police that the area could become a focus for anger. "I feared for my business," says John Burton, 47, who sells handmade woodwind instruments just a stone's throw from Clegg's Sheffield base. "And it was all because of the Clegg factor."

But is this really a fair assessment of the esteem in which the deputy prime minister and his party are held in the country? And, if so, how do Liberal Democrat activists foresee the future? Can they even see a future for their party with Clegg as leader? Talking to floating voters and Lib Dem activists in two of the party's strongholds in Cumbria and West Yorkshire last week, it is clear that the picture is rather more nuanced than bar-room wisdom would have us believe.

The rioters didn't attack Clegg's office, talk earlier this year of open revolt within the party came to nothing and there is no suggestion of a leadership challenge at the Birmingham conference. Results in recent council byelections – a win last month in Eton, in the royal borough of Windsor, and earlier this month in Mintsfeet, in Cumbria – adds substance to the theory that things may not be so bleak.

The party, it appears, can see a way forward with their current leader. Clegg is not popular, but perhaps, just maybe, there are some signs of a grudging but growing respect.

In the dark days of May, following the loss of the alternative vote campaign and the disastrous local election results in which they lost 747 councillors and nine councils, the Liberal Democrats were at their lowest ebb, with the public against them, and the national party and its leadership being blamed by its activists for cosying up too closely to the Conservatives.

"We got shafted and, I am sorry, but that wasn't right," says Ian Stewart, leader of the Lib Dems on Cumbria county council. "The parliamentarians need to know that." But the Liberal Democrats in Westminster have matured since then and adopted a policy of differentiation – setting out how they are influencing, some say tempering, the Conservative-led government.It is clear that among the public and activists there is a growing awareness of the difficulties Clegg and his colleagues have been facing, as well as the influence they are having on government policy.

Over 250 miles north of Westminster, the constituency office of Tim Farron, the party's young president, can be found at the bottom of a narrow winding lane off Kendal's main thoroughfare. The local wags say it is a nice place to hide, but Farron hasn't been hiding. He has been one of the Lib Dems pushing the message about what the party is doing differently to the Tories, and it would appear that the crucial floating voters, while less trusting of the Liberal Democrats than before, are not ruling out offering their support in the future.

Working on the front desk at Exiles tattoo parlour, opposite Farron's office, Otis Johnson, 22, says he voted Lib Dem in 2010 and regretted his choice as Clegg stepped out with David Cameron in Downing Street's rose garden to seal the coalition. However, he would consider, just maybe, voting for the party again. "I think Nick Clegg sold out and with the Tories in power people are suffering," says Johnson. "My dad is on disability benefits for multiple sclerosis, but what he can claim now is a lot less and it makes it very difficult.

"But I understand it is a difficult time and Tim Farron is excellent, he listens to people. I don't really know who I would vote for in a general election. I suppose if Farron was there, I would probably vote for him."

In Ruskins coffee shop further down the lane, waitress Eve Grayson, 23, who is studying geography at Lancaster university, is also not so angry that she can rule out voting Liberal Democrat again – although her trust in the party will need to be rebuilt. "I voted Lib Dem and promises were made and then broken. There is a group of Liberal Democrat activists who come in here on a Tuesday evening and I don't agree with what they say.

"On the riots it was all about them and us, how it was the fault of the working classes. And they are not very polite either. But Tim Farron is excellent, he actually does do a lot of good work, so maybe I would support them."

The message, it seems, is that there has been huge damage to the faith that voters once had in the Liberal Democrats – but all is not lost. It is a comforting thought to local politicians after a tumultuous 15 months. Colin Ross, the deputy leader of the Lib Dems on Sheffield council, of which the party lost control at the local elections, certainly believes things have been improving.

Clegg was told in no uncertain terms by party bigwigs during a closed meeting at a recent local government authority conference in Bristol that he needed to make Liberal Democrat positions clear, even while in government, and Ross says the message appears to have hit home. "We have been very positive since losing Sheffield, and out on the doorsteps a lot, and finding that some of that anger isn't here any more.

"To begin with, we were too cautious as Liberal Democrats in saying which bits of policy we were unhappy with. We played very fair with cabinet responsibility and all that, we wanted a united front. But we have been, and we need to be, more assertive over where we differ from government policy."

Jo Stephenson, a Liberal Democrat councillor on Cumbria council agrees. "Things have been better over the last two or three months," he said. "There is a feeling about that people are differentiating between the two parts of the coalition. People are saying that maybe the Liberal Democrats are doing some good stuff here, perhaps protecting us from the worst excesses of the Tory government."

Now the activists want more of the same in Clegg's speech at the party conference on Wednesday. Ross said: "I want from Nick a robust assertion about the difference we have made, where we have shifted the coalition to the centre ground, and the fact that some Con–servatives are starting to moan shows that Liberal Democrats are doing what we should be doing in coalition. People don't know how much we have achieved."

He adds: "Nick has been poorly portrayed. Obviously, I know him personally and he is an honourable man." Maybe, in time, the deputy prime minister could even be welcomed back in the Rising Sun.